Northern Lights came in a super cute little white tin. I was a little bit rough when opening the tin though, and it came off with a pop and some of the tea came out so I would caution you to be careful if you get it in a small white tin as well. This is my first exposure to Tealish and I really like their label – it’s simple, tells me the name and type of the tea. Unfortunately, the label on this little tin didn’t list the ingredients or steeping instructions, so I had to hop onto their website for that. The dry leaf has a very bright citrus aroma to it, it also smells sweetly of apples.

Northern Lights consists of: green tea, apple cubes, orange peels, fennel seeds, flavouring, and calendula petals. I quite like that I can see the ingredients in this tea (obviously minus the flavouring). It smells really good, has a great fruity aroma to it.

Northern Lights steeps to a pale yellow, and there are a lot of tiny particles to this tea so in hindsight I wish I had used a filter bag instead of a stainless steel infuser for this tea – learn from my mistakes if you don’t like drinking pieces of tea. This green tea blend has a sweet aroma to it, the citrus fragrance from the orange peel and the apple pieces mingle well to create a very fruity smell. On first taste, I can taste the natural sweetness from the fruit (and can make out the apple flavour), and a light sweetness from the green tea base. The green tea itself is quite light, and has just a hint of sweetness to it that is enjoyable.

I poured some of my initial steep into a mason jar to cool and then I added some ice cubes to it. This tea is delicious iced – I usually find a lot of fruity teas to be good iced, and Northern Lights was good. I might even like it better iced than hot.

A Second Cup?

I attempted to resteep Northern Lights and found for the second steep, the flavours that I loved in the initial steep were quite lacking in the second steep. It was hard to find the orange and the apple in the second round so I would say that Northern Lights is good for one steep only.

My Overall Impression

I liked Tealish’s Northern Lights. I really like the flavour profile and the fact that I could taste the orange, the apple, and the green tea all separately and the flavours balanced with each other quite well. I also think that Northern Lights does quite well when iced, and I’ll probably wind up cold steeping or icing this tea when I have it again. It doesn’t do well with resteeping, which was quite disappointing. I also wish that the label had more information about this tea (but I also acknowledge that Tealish may have changed their packaging/labeling for the tea that went into The Sugared Teacup subscription boxes).

Just one more steep…

One More Steep is a tea review blog written by Michelle, who lives in Vancouver, British Columbia. A self-proclaimed tea enthusiast, she's thoughtfully sipping every cup of tea that comes her way and branching out from the cupboard staples of Earl Grey and orange pekoe. Click here for more about One More Steep and Michelle.

Unless otherwise stated, any prices mentioned are in Canadian dollars (CAD $).